Eros and Anteros - Early Modern Culture

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Eros and Anteros:
Queer Mutuality in Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
David L. Orvis
In central London, at the heart of Piccadilly Circus, stands the Shaftesbury Monument
Memorial Fountain, a structure commemorating the philanthropic work of Anthony AshleyCooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. Atop this monument and cast in aluminum is the statue of a
scantily clad youth accoutered with wings and a bow (fig. 1). Although passers-by routinely
Fig. 1 Anteros, from the Shaftesbury Monument Memorial Fountain.
Photograph by David L. Orvis.
identify this statue as Eros, the sculptor Alfred Gilbert claims it is Anteros, Eros’s brother, since
he, “as opposed to Eros or Cupid, the frivolous tyrant,” represents “reflective and mature love.”1
Eros, in other words, embodies carnal lust, Anteros a benevolent mutuality transcendent of erotic
love. This distinction is lost upon the vast majority of the statue’s visitors – a consequence, no
doubt, of Eros’s prominence among the erotes. Nevertheless, the ease with which one can
1
Quoted in Richard Dorment, “Alfred Gilbert: Biography and Entries,” in Victorian High Renaissance, by Richard
Dorment, Gregory Hedburg, Leonée Ormond, Richard Ormond, and Allen Staley (Minneapolis: Minneapolis
Institute of Arts, 1978), 181. In Anteros: A Forgotten Myth (London: Routledge, 2011), Craig E. Stephenson reads
the sculpture biographically, arguing that Gilbert “associated ‘Eros’ . . . with the impetuous passion of his younger
self and ‘Anteros’ with a kindly love and selflessness with which he did not easily identify” (68).
Copyright © 2014 David L. Orvis and Early Modern Culture David L. Orvis 2
confuse two figures who purportedly represent two very different kinds of love bespeaks a
confusion inherent in the figures themselves and the conceptual differences they supposedly
signify. As we shall see, this confusion has a long, complex history, one that stretches back
thousands of years before the Shaftesbury Memorial’s unveiling. The controversy Anteros tends
to engender is nearly as ancient, so perhaps Gilbert half-expected the mixed reactions to his
sculpture. While he insisted that the memorial portrays a mature, spiritual love, this explanation
did little to assuage critics who thought it in poor taste to immortalize Shaftesbury’s philanthropy
with a nearly naked youth modeled after Angelo Colarossi, the sculptor’s then-fifteen-year-old
assistant. In this instance, embodiment appears to have undermined, indeed militated against, a
(strictly) Neoplatonic representation of love. Or to put it in literary terms, the tenor could not
efface the vehicle, which in any case continues to be misrecognized as Eros, the youthful
incarnation of (homo)erotic love.2
Dating back to antiquity, the tradition of Eros and Anteros is conflicted at least in part
because it has been subject to the vagaries of diachronic change and synchronic variance. Yet,
even the earliest depictions of the erotes seem vexed, as if conflict is bound up in the very notion
of Anteros. Whereas in some classical works Anteros is Eros’s companion and patron of requited
love, in others he is Eros’s nemesis and avenger of spurned love. In some texts he is born of
heteroerotic love, while in many others he is the product of homoerotic love. And while
sometimes Anteros emerges from love requited, at other times he is manifest in love scorned.
This cacophony of origins and significations derives from Anteros’s name, which taken from the
ancient Greek Αντερως can mean anything from “different love,” to “opposite love,” to “against
love” – all of which suggest the possibility of mutuality as well as antagonism. For example,
does “against love” mean “love pressed against love?” Or does it signify “love pitted against
love?” In the first interpretation, Anteros and his brother Eros constitute a mythic same-sex
couple; in the second, they are bitter enemies locked in an eternal struggle. The cohabitation of
love returned and love scorned presents problems of interpretation that during the Renaissance
were compounded by two trends: first, humanist scholars often confused and conflated Anteros
not only with Eros, but also with Amor Lethaeus, the dissolver of love (fig. 2); and second, the
2
On the controversies surrounding the construction and erection of the Shaftesbury Memorial, see Stephenson,
Anteros, 61-75; Jason Edwards, Alfred Gilbert’s Aestheticism: Gilbert Amongst Whistler, Wilde, Leighton, Pater
And Burne-Jones (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 93-132; and Alex Potts, “Eros in Piccadilly Circus: Monument and
Anti-Monument,” in Sculpture and the Pursuit of a Modern Ideal in Britain c. 1880-1930, edited by David Getsy
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 105-40.
Copyright © 2014 David L. Orvis and Early Modern Culture
David L. Orvis 3
Fig. 2. Woodcut showing the erotes, with Eros and Anteros wrestling over the
palm, by Filippo Ferroverde, from Vincezo Cartari, Imagini delli Dei de gl’Antichi
(Padova: Pietro Paolo Tozzi, 1615), 442. © The Warburg Institute.
rise to prominence of Neoplatonism encouraged revisionist readings of the homoerotic tale of
Eros and Anteros as exemplifying a spiritual mutuality that transcends carnal desire.3 Thus, one
is never quite sure which of the erotes is being presented. Rather like Michel Foucault’s famous
description of sodomy, the literature on Eros and Anteros is “utterly confused.”4
One might be surprised, therefore, to find Eros and Anteros among the allusions John
Milton includes in his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643) to figure the mutual love and
desire that should precede matrimony. Yet, as Will Stockton discusses in his introduction to this
special issue, Milton’s conceptualizations of companionship (whether hetero or homo) are not, as
some critics would have it, consistent. One of the aims of the present essay is to demonstrate that
this inconsistency is evident even within his divorce tracts, and hence, too, that Milton continued
to wrestle with the concept of matrimonial love even as he tried to make the case for divorce. In
Tetrachordon (1645), for instance, Milton dismisses Augustine’s pronouncement that male
friends, rather than mixed-sex spouses, constitute the ideal union:
3
The most comprehensive study of classical, medieval, and Renaissance representations of Eros and Anteros
remains Robert V. Merrill, “Eros and Anteros,” Speculum 19, no. 3 (July 1944): 264-84.
4
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol 1.: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage,
1990), 101.
David L. Orvis 4
Austin contests that manly friendships in all other regards had bin a more becomming
solace for Adam, then to spend so many secret years in an empty world with one woman.
But our Writers deservedly reject this crabbed opinion; and defend that there is a peculiar
comfort in the married state besides the genial bed, which no other society affords.5
In this passage, Milton elevates companionate marriage above masculine friendship, that
affective bond so many Renaissance humanists heralded as superior to heterosocial relations.6
Pointing to this and other examples from his polemics and poems, critics have identified
Milton’s participation in a discernible epistemic shift in the so-called sexual norm: when
homonormative friendship was superseded by heteronormative marriage.7 According to Gregory
Chaplin, “The marital ideal that Milton articulates in his divorce tracts . . . develops out of the
Platonically inspired friendship that he shared with Charles Diodati. Milton’s theory of marriage
thus represents the fusion of two discourses: Christian marriage, as modified by reformed
theologians and humanist scholars, and Renaissance friendship – the practice of classical
friendship revived by humanist educators and the dissemination of classical texts.”8 Likewise,
Thomas Luxon argues that Milton seeks “to redefine marriage using terms and principles of
classical friendship, and then to promote this newly dignified version of marriage as the
originary human relation and, therefore, the bedrock of social and political culture in Protestant
Christendom.”9 Milton’s project, then, was to appropriate the rhetoric of masculine friendship for
companionate marriage.
Without denying the importance of friendship in Milton’s ruminations about marriage, I
submit that the paradigm put forward by Chaplin, Luxon, and others has had a potentially
5
John Milton, Tetrachordon, in Complete Prose Works of Milton, Volume II, 1643-1648, edited by Ernest Sirluck
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 596. Milton makes similar point
in Colasterion, in Complete Prose Works of Milton, Volume II, 1643-1648, edited by Ernest Sirluck (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 739-40.
6
On masculine friendship and Renaissance homonormativity, see Laurie Shannon, Sovereign Amity: Figures of
Friendship in Shakespearean Contexts (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002). On challenges to
this version of friendship, see Thomas MacFaul, Male Friendship in Shakespeare and his Comedies (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), and the essays collected in Daniel T. Lochman, Maritere López, and Lorna
Hutson, ed., Discourses and Representations of Friendship in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2011).
7
On the problems with ascribing normative status to any early modern institution, see Karma Lochrie,
Heterosyncrasies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn’t (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
8
Gregory Chaplin, “‘One Flesh, One Heart, One Soul’: Renaissance Friendship and Miltonic Marriage,” Modern
Philology 99, no. 2 (November 2001): 266-92; 267.
9
Thomas H. Luxon, Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage and Friendship (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University
Press, 2005), 1-2.
David L. Orvis 5
totalizing effect on Milton criticism. That is, the scholarly emphasis on friendship and marriage –
as opposed to a wider range of hetero- and homoerotic relations that defy and exceed these
dominant paradigms – has established a false binary. Thus, whereas Chaplin claims that Milton’s
deployment of Eros and Anteros in Doctrine “depict[s] the marital bond because his friendship
with Diodati serves as the basis of the marital ideal he develops,” I propose that the myth about
the erotes posits a dynamic that resists any easy categorization.10 Examining the version of Eros
and Anteros we find in Doctrine in the context of the rich tradition from which it emerged, I aim
to show that Milton puts into discourse a concept of mutual love separated out from preexisting
social structures. I want to argue that Milton exploits the slew of contradictions and controversies
attached to the story of Eros and Anteros in order to articulate a hitherto ineffable mutual love –
what I am calling “queer mutuality.” Not only is this mutuality distinct from institutions such as
friendship and marriage; it is also put in the service of exposing the tyranny of those institutions.
That Milton would offer a critique of marriage in a chapter that in fact focuses on matrimonial
love might seem paradoxical. As I hope to demonstrate, however, this paradox enables the
polemicist to distinguish sharply between institutions of friendship and marriage on the one hand
and the mutualities they often disallow on the other. In so doing, Milton opens up a conceptual
gulf wherein the radical queer potential of his argument might be realized. For even if he could
not have anticipated the sexual politics of the modern era, the primacy Milton affords mutual
love irrespective of cultural expectations appears strikingly similar to queer critiques of marriage
and the neoliberal state.11
The argument of Book One, Chapter 6 in Doctrine rehearses, at the same time that it
interrogates, the terms and conditions of marriage that most concern Milton: “God regards Love
and Peace in the family more than a compulsive performance of marriage, which is more broke
by a grievous continuance than by a needful divorce.”12 In this argument, Milton throws into
relief crucial differences between marriage, which often requires “compulsive performance” and
10
Chaplin, “Renaissance Friendship and Miltonic Marriage,” 283. Other critics who have weighed in on the
significance of Milton’s friendship with Diodati include John P. Rumrich, “The Erotic Milton,” Texas Studies in
Literature and Language 41, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 128-41; and John T. Shawcross, John Milton: The Self and the
World (Lexington: the University of Kentucky Press, 2001), esp. ch. 3.
11
For queer critiques of gay marriage movements, see Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York and London:
Routledge, 2004), 102-30; Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack
on Democracy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2003), 43-66; Michael Warner, The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics,
and the Ethics of Queer Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 81-148.
12
John Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, in Complete Poems and Major Prose, edited by Merritt Y.
Hughes (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1957), 711. Citations hereafter provided in text.
David L. Orvis 6
“grievous continuance,” and reciprocal love founded upon “Love and Peace.” In the chapter
itself, Milton develops this distinction, explaining that marriage and love are not synonymous; on
the contrary, in many cases they oppose one another: “this is a deep and serious verity, showing
us that love in marriage cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual; and where love cannot be,
there can be left of wedlock nothing but the empty husk of an outside matrimony, as undelightful
and unpleasing to God as any other kind of hypocrisy” (711). In fulminating against the
“hypocrisy” that confers marital status upon individuals who do not love one another, Milton
acknowledges that mutual love differs fundamentally from, and therefore exists independently
of, the state of matrimony. Moreover, Milton insists upon the primacy of “love in marriage,”
without which “wedlock [is] nothing but the empty husk.” In other words, what concerns Milton
most here is not the integrity of the married state, but rather the threat marriage poses to love’s
“subsist[ence].”
To elucidate this originary mutual love, Milton provides his own adaptation of the myth
of Eros and Anteros. In what might be an attempt to bridge the gap between love and marriage,
Milton calls the story a “parabl[e]” of “matrimonial love” (711). However, the tale has nothing to
say about the cultivation of love within the constraints of wedlock; it explores, rather, the
Fig. 3. “Requited Love Represented by Eros and Anteros,” engraving
by Jacob Matham (1588). Digital Image © 2013 Museum Associates
/ LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY.
David L. Orvis 7
discovery of mutual love and desire irrespective of any social institutions. Beginning at the end,
we note that in Milton’s version, when Eros finally encounters his brother Anteros, their union is
described as “the reflection of a coequal and homogeneal fire” (711). What kind of love is this,
exactly? Though some artists did heterosexualize the myth, depicting Eros and Anteros as a
mixed-sex couple (fig. 3), these renditions make up a relatively small portion of Renaissance
interpretations. In general, Renaissance artists maintained the homoerotic dynamic of Eros and
Anteros’s coupling, prompting one to wonder why Milton would choose it as the vehicle for
expressing mutual love vis-à-vis marriage. Though one might think that the Neoplatonic reading
of the tale appealed to Milton, in the discussion that follows I shall show that the images of
tumescence and ejaculation he enlists in his version indicate a resistance to a narrowly allegorical
interpretation. It will also become clear, however, that the mutuality Milton illustrates is not
necessarily reducible to an erotic encounter. Drawing upon a range of sources that contest and
contradict one another, Milton uses Eros and Anteros to articulate a dynamic that remains
tantalizingly out of reach, intelligible more for what it isn’t – namely, friendship or marriage, or
rather friendship or marriage as such – than what it is or could be. Or to put it another way, the
wide spectrum of possibilities separated out from preexisting social arrangements, friendship and
marriage among them, makes Milton’s parable of Eros and Anteros so obviously invested in a
kind of queer mutuality.
In some respects, the tale we find in Doctrine is of a piece with Milton’s other works
emphasizing the need for one to discern right from wrong, good from evil. Eros searches “all
about” for his brother Anteros, along the way meeting “many false and feigning desires that
wander singly up and down in his likeness” (711). Whose “likeness” the “false and feigning
desires” inhabit remains unclear. They might be impersonating Anteros, since he is the one Eros
has set out to find. But they might also be disguised as Eros, since Milton, following Themistius,
claims that “Love, if he be not twin-born, yet hath a brother wondrous like him, called Anteros”
(711).13 In any event, Eros finds himself in the by-now familiar Miltonic position, tasked with
differentiating between true love and “false and feigning desires.” In fact, the quest is even more
difficult than it first appears. If we accept that Milton knew of and drew upon multiple accounts
of the myth, and indeed this is one of my premises, then in addition to finding his brother
13
See Oration 24 in Themistius, The Private Orations of Themistius, trans. and ed. Robert J. Penella (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 128-37.
David L. Orvis 8
Anteros, Eros must also locate the correct form of him. Although many Renaissance works
identify Anteros as the embodiment of mutual or reciprocal love, in Pausanias’s second-century
Description of Greece, a text Milton would have known, Anteros represents something entirely
different – what W.H.S. Jones translates as “love avenged”:
πρὸ δὲ τῆς ἐσόδου τῆς ἐς Ἀκαδηµίαν ἐστὶ βωµὸς Ἔρωτος ἔχων ἐπίγραµµα ὡς Χάρµος
Ἀθηναίων πρῶτος Ἔρωτι ἀναθείη. τὸν δὲ ἐν πόλει βωµὸν καλούµενον Ἀντέρωτος
ἀνάθηµα εἶναι λέγουσι µετοίκων, ὅτι Μέλης Ἀθηναῖος µέτοικον ἄνδρα Τιµαγόραν
ἐρασθέντα ἀτιµάζων ἀφεῖναι κατὰ τῆς πέτρας αὑτὸν ἐκέλευσεν ἐς τὸ ὑψηλότατον αὐτῆς
ἀνελθόντα: Τιµαγόρας δὲ ἄρα καὶ ψυχῆς εἶχεν ἀφειδῶς καὶ πάντα ὁµοίως κελεύοντι
ἤθελε χαρίζεσθαι τῷ µειρακίῳ καὶ δὴ καὶ φέρων ἑαυτὸν ἀφῆκε: Μέλητα δέ, ὡς
ἀποθανόντα εἶδε Τιµαγόραν, ἐς τοσοῦτο µετανοίας ἐλθεῖν ὡς πεσεῖν τε ἀπὸ τῆς πέτρας
τῆς αὐτῆς καὶ οὕτως ἀφεὶς αὑτὸν ἐτελεύτησε. καὶ τὸ ἐντεῦθεν δαίµονα Ἀντέρωτα τὸν
ἀλάστορα τὸν Τιµαγόρου κατέστη τοῖς µετοίκοις νοµίζειν.
[Before the entrance to the Academy is an altar to Love, with an inscription that Charmus
was the first Athenian to dedicate an altar to that god. The altar within the city called the
altar of Anteros they say was dedicated by resident aliens, because the Athenian Meles,
spurning the love of Timagoras, a resident alien, bade him ascend to the highest point of
the rock and cast himself down. When Meles saw that Timagoras was dead, he suffered
such pangs of remorse that he threw himself from the same rock and so died. From this
time the resident aliens worshipped as Anteros the avenging spirit of Timagoras.]14
In this passage, Anteros represents not love returned but love spurned, a love that sends
Timagoras and Meles to their deaths. As the avenging spirit of Timagoras, Anteros designs to
punish those who scorn love even, perhaps especially, when the lover is a foreigner. I shall have
more to say about the tragic trajectory of Pausanias’s version of the tale. For now, it should
suffice to note that if Milton’s parable focuses on the eventual union of the erotes, then this union
would entail Eros’s finding one instantiation of Anteros while avoiding the wrath of another.
Thus, at the same time that he must discern between the “many false and feigning desires” that
14
Pausanias, Description of Greece, Vol. 1, trans. and ed. W.H.S. Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1969), 1.30.1.
David L. Orvis 9
may appear as Eros and/or Anteros, Eros must also discern between Anteros as Love Returned
and Anteros as Love Avenged.
The misrecognition of love and desire that mobilizes Milton’s tale is also of central
importance to the earliest depiction of Anteros, which we find in Plato’s Phaedrus. Though
editors of Doctrine regularly cite Plato as Milton’s chief source, the particulars of the passage in
question cast serious doubt on critical interpretations that take masculine friendship as the salient
model for Miltonic marriage.15 Appearing in Phaedrus as a concept rather than a chrub, anteros
(ἀντέρωτα) names the physical desire felt between lover and beloved, erastes and eromenos. In
the famous chariot allegory, Socrates explains that each lover is a charioteer, his chariot pulled
by two horses:
ὅταν δ᾽ οὖν ὁ ἡνίοχος ἰδὼν τὸ ἐρωτικὸν ὄµµα, πᾶσαν αἰσθήσει διαθερµήνας τὴν ψυχήν,
γαργαλισµοῦ τε καὶ πόθου κέντρων ὑποπλησθῇ, ὁ µὲν εὐπειθὴς τῷ ἡνιόχῳ τῶν ἵππων, ἀεί
τε καὶ τότε αἰδοῖ βιαζόµενος, ἑαυτὸν κατέχει µὴ ἐπιπηδᾶν τῷ ἐρωµένῳ: ὁ δὲ οὔτε
κέντρων ἡνιοχικῶν οὔτε µάστιγος ἔτι ἐντρέπεται, σκιρτῶν δὲ βίᾳ φέρεται, καὶ πάντα
πράγµατα παρέχων τῷ σύζυγί τε καὶ ἡνιόχῳ ἀναγκάζει ἰέναι τε πρὸς τὰ παιδικὰ καὶ
µνείαν ποιεῖσθαι τῆς τῶν ἀφροδισίων χάριτος.
[Now when the charioteer beholds the love-inspiring vision, and his whole soul is
warmed by the sight, and is full of the tickling and prickings of yearning, the horse that is
obedient the charioteer, constrained then as always by modesty, controls himself and does
not leap upon the beloved; but the other no longer heeds the pricks or the whip of the
charioteer, but springs wildly forward, causing all possible trouble to his mate and to the
charioteer, and forcing them to approach the beloved and propose the joys of love.]16
Although Socrates warns against allowing the concupiscent horse to drive the chariot, his
description of reciprocal love suggests that such consummation is not just desirable but often
inevitable:
15
For a few examples of the critical tendency to cite Phaedrus as Milton’s primary source, see Merritt Hughes, ed.,
Complete Poems and Major Prose (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2003), 711; Ernest Sirluck, ed., Complete Prose
Works of Milton, Volume II, 1643-1648 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University Press,
1959), 254-55; and Sara J. van den Berg and W. Scott Howard, ed., The Divorce Contracts of John Milton: Texts
and Contexts (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2010), 465.
16
Plato, Phaedrus, in Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, trans. and ed. Harold North Fowler
(Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1999), 253e-254a.
David L. Orvis 10
ἐρᾷ µὲν οὖν, ὅτου δὲ ἀπορεῖ: καὶ οὔθ᾽ ὅτι πέπονθεν οἶδεν οὐδ᾽ ἔχει φράσαι, ἀλλ᾽ οἷον ἀπ᾽
ἄλλου ὀφθαλµίας ἀπολελαυκὼς πρόφασιν εἰπεῖν οὐκ ἔχει, ὥσπερ δὲ ἐν κατόπτρῳ ἐν τῷ
ἐρῶντι ἑαυτὸν ὁρῶν λέληθεν. καὶ ὅταν µὲν ἐκεῖνος παρῇ, λήγει κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἐκείνῳ τῆς
ὀδύνης, ὅταν δὲ ἀπῇ, κατὰ ταὐτὰ αὖ ποθεῖ καὶ ποθεῖται, εἴδωλον ἔρωτος ἀντέρωτα ἔχων:
καλεῖ δὲ αὐτὸν καὶ οἴεται οὐκ ἔρωτα ἀλλὰ φιλίαν εἶναι. ἐπιθυµεῖ δὲ ἐκείνῳ παραπλησίως
µέν, ἀσθενεστέρως δέ, ὁρᾶν, ἅπτεσθαι, φιλεῖν, συγκατακεῖσθαι: καὶ δή, οἷον εἰκός, ποιεῖ
τὸ µετὰ τοῦτο ταχὺ ταῦτα.
[So he is in love, but he knows not with whom; he does not understand his own condition
and cannot explain it; like one who has caught a disease of the eyes from another, he can
give no reason for it; he sees himself in his lover as in a mirror, but is not conscious of
the fact. And in the lover’s presence, like him he ceases from his pain, and in his absence,
like him he is filled with yearning such as he inspires, and love's image, requited love,
dwells within him; but he calls it, and believes it to be, not love, but friendship. Like the
lover, though less strongly, he desires to see his friend, to touch him, kiss him, and lie
down by him; and naturally these things are soon brought about.]17
In this depiction, anteros signifies a reciprocal or requited love expressed through physical
intimacy. Although the critical tendency has been to identify this love as amity, as in Chaplin’s
reading of Milton’s use of Phaedrus, Socrates insists, following Harold Fowler’s translation, that
the lover “calls it, and believes it to be, not love, but friendship.” This distinction is crucial: not
only does Socrates, and through him Plato, distinguish between love (ἔρωτα) and friendship
(φιλίαν); he also declares that mutual love is often misrecognized as friendship. More simply put,
anteros feels like friendship, when in fact it is something else. This something else, moreover,
involves a physical consummation that, propelled by the concupiscent horse, remains distinct
from, but not incompatible with, the spiritual love Socrates celebrates as divine madness.
During the Renaissance, at least two interpretations of this consummation became
prominent: some humanists sought to de-eroticize the myth, repackaging it as an allegory for
choosing spiritual love over carnal love, while others either eschewed this prudish reading
altogether or reproduced it so as to lay bare its pretentiousness. If the Shaftesbury Memorial
17
Ibid. 255d-255e.
David L. Orvis 11
represents a more recent attempt at the former interpretation, Andrea Alciati’s Emblemata
includes a considerably more influential example, one Milton certainly knew. In Emblem CX
(“Ἀντέρως, id est, Amor virtutis”), Alciati presents Anteros as “love of virtue”:
Dic ubi sunt incurvi arcus? ubi tela Cupido?
Mollia queis iuvenum figere corda soles. Fax ubi tristis? ubi pennae? tres unde corollas
Fert manus? unde aliam tempora cincta gerunt?
Haud mihi vulgari est hospes cum Cypride quicquam,
Ulla voluptatis nos neque forma tulit.
Sed puris hominum succendo mentibus ignes
Disciplinae, animos astraque ad alta traho.
Quatuor ecque ipsa texo virtute corollas:
Quarum, quae Sophiae est, tempora prima tegit.
[“Tell me, where are your arching bows, where your arrows, Cupid, the shafts which you
use to pierce the tender hearts of the young? Where is your hurtful torch, where your
wings? Why does your hand hold three garlands? Why do your temples wear a fourth? Stranger, I have nothing to do with common Venus, nor did any pleasurable shape bring
me forth. I light the fires of learning in the pure minds of men and draw their thoughts to
the stars on high. I weave four garlands out of virtue’s self and the chief of these, the
garland of Wisdom, wreathes my temples.”]18
The image for this emblem (fig. 4) show Anteros (or is it Eros?) holding a palm, a reference to
yet another version of the myth from antiquity. In a different section of his Description of
Greece, Pausanias observes,
ἔστι δὲ καὶ τρίτος γυµνασίου περίβολος, ὄνοµα µὲν Μαλθὼ τῆς µαλακότητος τοῦ
ἐδάφους ἕνεκα, τοῖς δὲ ἐφήβοις ἀνεῖται τῆς πανηγύρεως τὸν χρόνον πάντα. ἔστι δὲ ἐν
γωνίᾳ τῆς Μαλθοῦς πρόσωπον Ἡρακλέους ἄχρι ἐς τοὺς ὤµους, καὶ ἐν τῶν παλαιστρῶν
18
Andrea Alciati, Emblemata cum commentariis Claudii Minois I.C. Francisci Sanctii Brocensis, & notis Laurentii
Pignarii Patavini . . . Opera et vigiliis Ioannis Accesserunt in fine Federici Morelli Professoris Regij (Padua, 1621),
p. 457. I have modernized “u/v” in my transcription. The English translation is from “Alciato at Glasgow,” Glasgow
University Emblem Website, http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/emblem.php?id=A21a110.
David L. Orvis 12
µιᾷ τύπος Ἔρωτα ἔχων ἐπειργασµένον καὶ τὸν καλούµενον Ἀντέρωτα: ἔχει δὲ ὁ µὲν
φοίνικος ὁ Ἔρως κλάδον, ὁ δὲ ἀφελέσθαι πειρᾶται τὸν φοίνικα ὁ Ἀντέρως.
[There is also a third enclosed gymnasium, called Maltho from the softness of its floor,
and reserved for the youths for the whole time of the festival. In a corner of the Maltho is
a bust of Heracles as far as the shoulders, and in one of the wrestling-schools is a relief
showing Love and Love Returned, as he is called. Love holds a palm-branch, and Love
Returned is trying to take the palm from him.]19
As Guy de Tervarent has shown, this depiction of Eros and Anteros as competing over a palm
was common in Renaissance art.20 For Neoplatonists such as Alciati, the struggle between Eros
and Anteros amounts to a struggle between physical love and spiritual love. That the brothers
wrestling for the palm often look identical to one another (figs. 2 and 5) underscores the
difficulty of the struggle; they are evenly matched, and more often than not Renaissance artists
illustrate not a decisive victory but an ongoing struggle. The twinning of Eros and Anteros also
raises questions about the supposed differences between the two kinds of love they embody.
Indeed, how do we know Eros from Anteros? And how do we move away, finally, from the
eroticized images through which erotic and spiritual love are conveyed?21 Once again, we find
the tenor unable to efface the vehicle. To illustrate the dilemma, one might glance at the text of
Emblem CXI from Alciati’s Emblemata:
Aligerum, aligeroque inimicum pinxit Amori,
Arcu arcum, atque ignes igne domans Nemesis.
Ut quae aliis fecit, patiatur: at hic puer olim
Intrepidus gestans tela, miser lacrimat.
Ter spuit inque sinus imos: res mira, crematur
Igne ignis, furias odit Amoris Amor.
19
Pausanias, Description of Greece, Vol. 3, trans. and ed. W.H.S. Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1966), 6.23.5.
20
Guy de Tervarent, “Eros and Anteros or Reciprocal Love in Ancient and Renaissance Art,” Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965): 205-208.
21
On Shakespeare’s pursuit of these questions, see Peggy Munoz Simonds, “Eros and Anteros in Shakespeare’s
Sonnets 153 and 154: An Iconographical Study,” Spenser Studies 7 (1987): 261-86.
David L. Orvis 13
[Nemesis has fashioned a form with wings, a foe to Love with his wings, subduing bow
with bow and flames with flame, so that Love may suffer what he has done to others. But
this boy, once so bold when he was carrying his arrows, now weeps in misery and has
spat three times low on his breast. A wondrous thing - fire is being burned with fire, Love
is loathing the frenzies of Love.]22
On its face, this emblem records Anteros’s triumph over Eros, but in the scene Alciati narrates
Eros has his carnal desires turned against him, implying that Anteros vanquishes his brother only
by outmatching him in the arena of erotic prowess. Here the twinning of Eros and Anteros
confounds the very qualities Alciati is at such pains to differentiate.
Fig. 4. Emblem CX, from Andrea Alciati, Emblemata cum commentariis Claudii Minois
I.C. Francisci Sanctii Brocensis, & notis Laurentii Pignarii Patavini . . . Opera et vigiliis
Ioannis Accesserunt in fine Federici Morelli Professoris Regij (Padua, 1621), p. 457.
By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
22
Alciati, Emblemata cum commentariis, 461-62. English translation from “Alciato at Glasgow,”
http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/emblem.php?id=A21a111.
David L. Orvis 14
Fig. 5. Engraving of Eros and Anteros wrestling over the palm, from Bernard
de Montfaucon, Antiquity explained, and represented in sculptures, trans.
David Humphreys, Vol. 1 (London, 1721), 117.
Trinity College Library, Hartford, CT.
If Alciati allies himself with the Neoplatonists, Milton, in rejecting a narrowly allegorical
view of Eros and Anteros, gravitates more towards Plato and the dialogue on love as divine
madness in Phaedrus. So, too, does Ben Jonson, whom Merritt Hughes cites as a contemporary
source for Milton’s representation of the erotes.23 Before attending to the homoerotics of the
excerpt from Doctrine, then, I would like to turn briefly to one of Jonson’s masques that appears
to have been formative for Milton. Performed at Bolsover Castle in 1634 and printed in 1641,
Love’s Welcome was likely Jonson’s final court masque. Staged in honor of King Charles I and
Queen Henrietta Maria, the masque begins with the chorus’s pondering the nature of love:
Chor.
If LOVE be call’d a lifting of the Sense,
To knowledge of that pure intelligence,
Wherein the Soule hath rest, and residence;
1 Tenor
When were the Senses in such order plac’d?
2 Tenor
The Sight, the Hearing, Smelling, Touching, Taste,
All at one banquet?
23
Hughes, Complete Poems and Major Prose, 711. Hughes mentions a poem titled Eros and Anteros, but I have not
been able to locate any work bearing this title. I have, however, found at least four works by Jonson that include
Eros and Anteros: Challenge at Tilt, Cynthia’s Revels, Love Restored, and Love’s Welcome at Bolsover.
David L. Orvis 15
Base
‘Would it ever last!24
Though the meditation begins with the Neoclasically informed idea that love must transcend
“Sense, / To knowledge of that pure intelligence,” the individual voices that make up the chorus
go on to undermine such a view by conceiving of love as a sensual banquet. The masque’s stage
directions indicate that an actual banquet is then set before the king and queen, but not before the
chorus concludes, “And hence, / At every reall banquet to the Sense, / Welcome, true Welcome
fill the Complements” (808). Alhough the interactive aspect of the performance is de rigueur for
Stuart masques, this particular gesture conscripts into a polyamorous feast of love not just the
sovereign and his queen but everyone in attendance.
One might suspect that this initial feast belongs to the Jonsonian antimasque, the place
where chaos and discord are simulated. However, Eros and Anteros’s introduction into the
masque’s interrogation of love suggests that Neoplatonic ascent is finally not possible. Nor is it
desirable. Jonson’s skepticism is evident in the stage directions that describe the first entrance of
Eros and Anteros:
And the King, and Queene, having a second Banquet set downe before them from the
Cloudes by two Loves; One, as the Kings, with a bough of Palme (in his hand) cleft a
little at the top, the other as the Queenes; differenced by their Garlands only: His of
White, and Red Roses; the other of Lilly’s inter-weav’d, Gold, Silver, Purple, &c. They
were both arm’d, and wing’d: with Bowes and Quivers, Cassocks, Breeches, Buskins,
Gloves, and Perukes alike. They stood silent awhile, wondring at one another, till at last
the lesser of them began to speake. (810)
Here, as elsewhere, Eros and Anteros remain virtually indistinguishable, the only marker of
difference the color of their garlands. In fact, they look so similar that their entrance is
punctuated by an awkward silence as they “wond[er] at one another.” At this moment, Jonson
affords spectators the ability to see the embodiment of Eros and Anteros as a process that
culminates in their becoming aware of one another’s existence. As usual, the erotes wrestle over
the palm, but whereas Renaissance artists tend to depict the struggle rather than the outcome, and
whereas Neoplatonists tend to insist that of course Anteros wins, Jonson’s stage directions
24
Jonson, Love’s Welcome at Bolsover, 807. Citations hereafter provided in text.
David L. Orvis 16
indicate that “Anteros snatch’d at the Palme, but Eros divided it” (811). In addition to giving
Eros rather than Anteros agency in this situation, Jonson allows that Eros might make the
rational decision to split the palm between the two brothers. Indeed, if either of the brothers is to
be labeled irrational, it is the overzealous and uncompromising Anteros seen “snatch[ing] at the
Palme.” As for the act itself, Eros’s dividing the palm exemplifies a palpable shift away from
Neoplatonism and back toward Plato. As in Socrates’ chariot allegory in Phaedrus, erotic love
and spiritual love are not found to be mutually exclusive – or at least not inherently so. Although
Jonson’s revision of the palm incident might seem minor, it can be read as a rebuke of the
unrealistic, even undesirable views of Neoplatonists who, like Anteros and Alciati, think Eros
has no claim to the palm in the first place.25
The palm’s division might serve as a diplomatic resolution to the argument between
cherubs, but Eros and Anteros at peace are no less disruptive to the masque’s representation of
love, since any admission of carnality between the brothers activates and brings to the fore the
latent homoeroticism of this dynamic. Indeed, moments later the reconciled erotes return to
expound on mutual love, an exchange that will get them booted from the performance:
Eros
We ha’ cleft the bough,
And struck a tallie of our loves, too, now.
Anteros
I call to mind the wisdome of our Mother,
Venus, who would have Cupid have a Brother –
Eros
To looke upon, and thrive. Mee seemes I grew
Three inches higher sin’ I met with you.
Anteros
It was the Counsell, that the Oracle gave
Your Nurses, the glad Graces, sent to crave
Themis advice. You doe not know (quoth shee)
The nature of this Infant. Love may be
Brought forth thus little, live, a-while, alone;
But ne’re will prosper, if he have not one
Sent after him to play with.
Eros
Such another
25
On the antimasque/masque structure, see Stephen Orgel, The Jonsonian Masque (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1981). Cf. Lesley Mickel, Ben Jonson’s Antimasques: A History of Growth and Decline (Aldershot: Ashgate,
1999).
David L. Orvis 17
As you are, Anteros, our loving brother.
Anteros
Who would be, always, planted in your eye;
For Love, by Love, increaseth mutually.
Eros
Wee, either, looking on each other, thrive;
Anteros
Shoot up, grow galliard –
Eros
Yes, and more alive!
Anteros
When one’s away, it seemes we both are lesse.
Eros
I was a Dwarfe, an Urchin, I confesse,
Till you were present. (811-812)
Throughout the dialogue, Eros and Anteros express mutual love through the image of
tumescence.26 As they begin to experience reciprocal love, Eros becomes aroused, declaring that
he “grew / Three inches higher sin’ [he] met with” Anteros. For his part, Anteros encourages his
brother to grow even bigger – to “Shoot up, grow galliard.” Here reciprocal love acts as an
aphrodisiac, enhancing erotic desire. As the flirtation continues, the dialogue becomes
stichomythic, enacting the rhythms of intercourse. In the unlikely event that some onlookers
have missed the bawdiness of the encounter, Philalethes enters to prevent the erotes from
carrying things too far: “No more of your Poetrie (prettie Cupids) lest presuming on your little
wits, you prophane the intention of your service” (812). Philalethes does not clarify whether
homoerotic acts in themselves or their performance before the king and queen threaten to
“prophane the intention” of Eros and Anteros. Either way, the exchange makes explicit that the
mutuality embodied in Jonson’s Eros and Anteros is not the transcendent love of the
Neoplatonists.
In the masque’s final monologue, Philalethes attempts to reconcile the love exemplified
in Eros and Anteros with the strictures of marriage, but the result suggests a fundamental
disconnection between the two. That is, while mutual love and marriage are not necessarily
diametrically opposed, they are not synonymous either. After scolding the erotes, Philalethes
calls the court a “School-Divinitie of Love” and informs them, “Here you shall read Hymen,
having lighted two Torches, either of which enflame mutually, but waste not. One Love by the
others aspect increasing, and both in right lines aspiring” (813). Though Philalethes endeavors to
26
Apparently, Jonson was more than a little intrigued by Eros and Anteros’s penises. He makes a similar connection
between tumescence and Eros and Anteros’s love in another masque, Challenge at Tilt. See David Riggs, Ben
Jonson: A Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 202-203.
David L. Orvis 18
bend the erotes’ desires toward marriage, the language of tumescence returns in his forecasting
that the boys will “increase” and “inspire.” What is more, the need for a “School-Divinitie of
Love” where the erotes will be taught how to abide marital obligations implies that while mutual
love is natural, matrimonial love is cultural.27 Although Eros and Anteros, no less than Adam and
Eve, are, as Jonson’s dialogue shows, companions fashioned for one another, the erotes radically
oppose, even as they resemble, Biblically sanctioned matrimonial love.28
The similarities between Milton’s and Jonson’s representations of Eros and Anteros
indicate that the authors had comparable views on the kind of love the erotes signify. Like
Jonson, Milton rejects a purely allegorical reading of the story. Also like Jonson, Milton invokes
tumescence to illustrate Eros’s discovering Anteros:
[S]traight his arrows lose their golden heads and shed their purple feathers, his silken
braids untwine and slip their knots, and that original and fiery virtue given him by fate all
on a sudden goes out, and leave him undeified and despoiled of all his force; till finding
Anteros at last, he kindles and repairs the almost faded ammunition of his deity by the
reflection of a coequal and homogeneal fire. (711)
Desperate to cast off the “many false and feigning desires that wander singly up and down in his
likeness” and find his brother Anteros, Eros grows flaccid. The arrows representing his phallic
power “lose their golden heads and shed their purple feathers,” while the “silken braids” that
evidence his potency “untwine.” Upon finding Anteros, he “kindles and repairs the almost faded
ammunition,” regaining his phallic “force.” As in Jonson’s masque, the coupling of Eros and
Anteros evinces a consummated homoerotic love that an allegorical reading cannot finally
contain. On this point, it bears notice that Milton, following Jonson, does not award Anteros
victory over Eros. On the contrary, Eros and Anteros merge in “a coequal and homogeneal fire.”
This union may recall the Biblical account of the married couple’s becoming “one flesh,” but for
Milton the “coequal and homogeneal fire” of mutual love precedes marriage.29 Hence, while
Jane Kingsley-Smith has argued that by the close of the seventeenth century, Cupid, especially as
27
For an incisive reading of homoerotic love as preceding and less a cultural construct than heteroerotic love and
marriage, see Stephen Guy-Bray, “Shakespeare and the Invention of the Heterosexual,” Early Modern Literary
Studies Special Issue 16 (October 2007): 12.1-28 http://purl.oclc.org/emls/si-16/brayshks.htm.
28
Geneva Bible, Gen. 2:20.
29
Geneva Bible, Gen. 2.24, Mark 10.8.
David L. Orvis 19
he is portrayed in masques, suffers from a “dematerialization of eros,” thereby “los[ing] power
and agency,” in Jonson’s and Milton’s renderings, the erotes’ phallic abilities are enhanced
rather than depleted.30
Moreover, the erotes’ coming together in “a coequal and homogeneal fire” points to a
relationship that exists apart from, perhaps even in contradistinction to, dominant cultural
institutions. Founded upon sameness, the bond of Eros and Anteros exhibits a homogeneity that
seems closer to the angelic relations Stephen Guy-Bray examines in his essay for this special
issue than the union of husband and wife. Thus, the originary “coequal and homogeneal fire” of
the erotes remains distinct from the “matrimonial love” Milton mentions at the beginning of
Book One, Chapter 6 in Doctrine. Although the one should, in Milton’s view, lead to the other,
the need for divorce implies that often such is not the case. But if mutual love does not equal
marriage, neither does it fall under the rubric of amicitia. As the excerpt from Phaedrus reminds
us, Anteros stands for a love mistaken for friendship. With Eros and Anteros, then, Milton
articulates an originary mutual love that becomes legible through a consideration of what it isn’t.
In distinguishing this mutuality from marriage and friendship, Milton posits a queer dynamic that
resists absorption into preexisting relationalities. Although for Milton this mutuality is phallicly
constituted, figured in images of tumescence and male ejaculation, the emphasis on homogeneity
in Eros and Anteros’s consummation of their love does, I think, create a space for female
homoerotic desire. That is, while Milton uses a story of male homoerotic desire to envisage a
mutuality that cannot be subsumed under discourses of friendship or marriage, the implications
for this parable extend to any couple whose love defies normalizing institutions such as
friendship or marriage.
To make sense of Milton’s understanding of mutual love as both requisite for and
potentially incompatible with matrimony and matrimonial love, one might consider the tragic
events that underlie a number classical stories delineating Anteros’s origins. In the passage from
Pausanias’s Description of Greece I quoted earlier, Anteros personifies Love Avenged. This
version comes into existence when the Athenian Meles spurns the love of a resident alien named
Timagoras. Upon seeing Timagoras’s corpse, Meles felt such insurmountable remorse that, in the
words of Jones’s translation, “he threw himself from the same rock and so died.” According to
30
Jane Kingsley-Smith, Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010), 177.
David L. Orvis 20
this version of the story, Love Avenged emerges from the unrequited love of one man for
another. That Pausanias notes the different nationalities of Meles and Timagoras suggests that
xenophobia rather than homophobia is the motivating factor for the rejection, but here, as in
other versions of the tale, one could read this incident as one of misrecognition, one that proves
fatal. Only after Timagoras has done as his would-be lover has ordered does Meles realize the
egregious mistake he has made. And so, in an act that reflects his acknowledgment of and
atonement for the error he has committed, Meles joins in his lover in death.
One of Pausanias’s contemporaries, Aelian, traces a different etiology of Anteros in On
the Characteristics of Animals. Although Anteros is manifest in the requited love of Poseiden
and Nerites, a same-sex relationship that is also intergenerational, it, too, ends in tragedy:
ὁ δὲ ἄλλος λόγος ἐρασθῆναι βοᾷ Νηρίτου Ποσειδῶνα, ἀντερᾶν δὲ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος, καὶ
τοῦ γε ὑµνουµένου Ἀντέρωτος ἐντεῦθεν τὴν γένεσιν ὑπάρξασθαι. συνδιατρίβειν οὖν τά
τε ἄλλα τῷ ἐραστῇ τὸν ἐρώµενον ἀκούω καὶ µέντοι καὶ αὐτοῦ ἐλαύνοντος κατὰ τῶν
κυµάτων τὸ ἅρµα τὰ µὲν κήτη τἄλλα καὶ τοὺς δελφῖνας καὶ προσέτι καὶ τοὺς Τρίτωνας
ἀναπηδᾶν ἐκ τῶν µυχῶν καὶ περισκιρτᾶν τὸ ἅρµα καὶ περιχορεύειν, ἀπολείπεσθαι δ᾽ οὖν
τοῦ τάχους τῶν ἵππων πάντως καὶ πάντη: µόνα δὲ ἄρα τὰ παιδικά οἱ παροµαρτεῖν καὶ
µάλα πλησίον, στόρνυσθαι δὲ αὐτοῖς καὶ τὸ κῦµα καὶ διίστασθαι τὴν θάλατταν αἰδοῖ
Ποσειδῶνος: βούλεσθαι γὰρ τῇ τε ἄλλῃ τὸν θεὸν εὐδοκιµεῖν τὸν καλὸν ἐρώµενον καὶ οὖν
καὶ τῇ νήξει διαπρέπειν.
[But the other account proclaims that Poseiden was the lover of Nerites, and that Nerites
returned his love, and that this was the origin of celebrated Anteros. And so, as I am told,
for the favourite spent his time with his lover, and moreover when Poseidon drove his
chariot over the waves, all other great fishes as well as dolphins and tritons too, sprang up
from their deep haunts and gambolled and danced around the chariot, only to be left
utterly and far behind by the speed of his horses; only the boy favourite was his escort
close at hand, and before them the waves sank to rest and the sea parted out of reverence
to Poseidon, for the god willed that his beautiful favourite should not only be highly
esteemed for other reasons but should also be pre-eminent at swimming.]31
31
Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals, Vol. 3, trans. A.F. Schofield, Loeb Classical Library (London: William
Heinemann Ltd; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 14.28.
David L. Orvis 21
All is well until Apollo, in the form of the Sun, transforms Nerites into a spiral shell. At first
Aelian proposes that Apollo metamorphoses the boy on account of his quickness, but it soon
becomes clear that this explanation is merely a pretense:
τὸν δὲ Ἥλιον νεµεσῆσαι τῷ τάχει τοῦ παιδὸς ὁ µῦθος λέγει, καὶ ἀµεῖψαί οἱ τὸ σῶµα ἐς
τὸν κόχλον τὸν νῦν, οὐκ οἶδα εἰπεῖν ὁπόθεν ἀγριάναντα: οὐδὲ γὰρ ὁ µῦθος λέγει. εἰ δέ τι
χρὴ συµβαλεῖν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀτεκµάρτων, λέγοιντ᾽ ἂν ἀντερᾶν Ποσειδῶν καὶ Ἥλιος. καὶ
ἠγανάκτει µὲν ἴσως ὁ Ἥλιος ὡς ἐν θαλάττῃ φεροµένῳ, ἐβούλετο δὲ αὐτὸν οὐκ ἐν τοῖς
κήτεσιν ἀριθµεῖσθαι, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν ἄστροις φέρεσθαι.
[But the story relates that the Sun resented the boy’s power of speed and transformed his
body into the spiral shell as it now is: the cause of his anger I cannot tell, neither does the
fable mention it. But if one may guess where there is nothing to go by, Poseidon and the
Sun might be said to be rivals. And it may be that the Sun was vexed at the boy travelling
about the sea and wished that he should travel among the constellations instead of being
counted among sea-monsters.]32
Though Aelian locates the origin of Anteros in Poseiden and Nerites’ love for one another, the
tragedy that befalls the intergenerational same-sex couple suggests that this love is elegiac,
consigned to the past. In this instance, Anteros comes closest to occupying that paradoxical
position where he inhabits both Love Returned and Love Avenged, since the requited love
Poseidon and Nerites share is destroyed by a god jealous of their relationship.
Aelian’s story is also notable for its juxtaposing reciprocal love, which is homoerotic and
tragic, with marriage, which is heteroerotic and procreative. Or to borrow Lee Edelman’s popular
phrase, we could say that Aelian’s tale suggests that the love Anteros symbolizes has “no
future.”33 Indeed, Poseidon and Apollo, the gods vying over Nerites, are veteran pederasts: in
addition to loving Nerites, Poseidon loves Pelops (and Ganymede, according to Marlowe’s Hero
and Leander); Apollo, meanwhile, also loves Hyacinthus. These instances of mutual love are
also short-lived: Pelops goes on to marry, have children, and found royal dynasties of Greece,
while Hyacinthus is killed by a wayward discuss and subsequently metamorphosed into a
32
Ibid.
Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press,
2004).
33
David L. Orvis 22
flower.34 According to Aelian, then, mutual love is not only homoerotic and intergenerational but
also elegiac, destined to end either in marriage or in death.
One could argue that the tragic trajectories of Pausanias and Aelian help explain the gap
Milton opens up between mutual love and marriage in Doctrine, but I want to resist the
temptation to oversimplify the matter and add this text to the massive heap of works associating
homoerotic desire with death. Returning Eros and Anteros to their immediate Miltonic context,
we are reminded that the polemicist is employing the allusion to make a point about the
disconnection between mutual love and marriage. And as Milton makes clear throughout his
divorce tracts, mutual love is not the problem. In the final sentence of the chapter that features
Eros and Anteros, Milton concludes,
And it is a less breach of wedlock to part with wise and quiet consent betimes, than still
to soil and profane that mystery of joy and union with a polluting sadness and perpetual
distemper: for it is not the outward continuing of marriage that keeps whole that
covenant, but whosoever does most according to peace and love, whether in marriage or
in divorce, he it is that breaks marriage least; it being so often written, that “Love only is
the fulfilling of every commandment.” (712)
As one of his contemporaries was quick to point out, Milton’s quotation of Romans contains a
subtle yet potentially radical modification: whereas Paul writes, “Love is the fulfilling of every
Commandment,” Milton declares, “Love only is the fulfilling of every commandment.”35
Milton’s insistence that “Love only” matters in “keep[ing] whole that covenant” subordinates
marriage to the sustaining love I have been calling “queer mutuality.” Appealing to the tragic
elements of Anteros in order to suggest the disastrous effects matrimony has had on this mutual
love – indeed, on all “coequal and homogeneal fire[s],” in all their permutations – Milton
transforms the love of Anteros into the divine’s imperative for humanity. Sometimes divorce is
the only way to keep God’s commandments.
34
On Poseidon’s love for Pelops, see Pindar, First Olympian Ode, in “Olympian Odes” and “Pythian Odes,” trans.
and ed. William H. Race (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 71; on his love for
Ganymede, see Marlowe, Hero and Leander, in The Collected Poems of Christopher Marlowe, ed. Patrick Cheney
and Brian J. Striar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 639-712; on Apollo’s love for Hyacinthus, see
Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology, trans. and ed. Robin Hard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008),
1.3.3.
35
Anon., An Answer to a book intituled, The doctrine and discipline of divorce (London, 1644), 37. The passage in
dispute is Romans 13:10.
David L. Orvis 23
How exactly divorce might sustain this queer love (one would presume it signals its end)
is one question Milton’s argument raises but does not answer. Nevertheless, in the process of
bemoaning marriage’s tyranny over those compelled to wed, Milton acknowledges the
possibility for what we might call a queer emancipatory politics of love. Of course, the queer
politics I perceive in one chapter of one divorce tract do not make Milton a forebear of modern
queer movements critical of marriage as a heteronormative, patriarchal institution. Nor do they
reflect Milton’s clear and final say on matters of love and marriage. As I have shown, Milton’s
“say” is unclear even in this one divorce tract, to say nothing of his other works.36 Because I am
not convinced, as some critics are, that it is possible to show “how Milton works,” or indeed that
Milton works – at least when “works” amounts to an achievement of argumentative clarity and
internal consistency – I view the confused deployment of Eros and Anteros in Doctrine as a
glimpse into Milton’s queer potential for theorizing and politicizing forms of love that do not
consolidate into those supported by already existing, normalizing institutions.37 This potential
may not make Milton our contemporary, but it does bring into focus a Milton who takes aim at
the same monolithic institutions that preoccupy much queer criticism today.
36
On Milton’s inconsistency across his corpus, see Peter C. Herman, Destabilizing Milton: “Paradise Lost” and the
Poetics of Incertitude (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
37
Stanley Fish, How Milton Works (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003).

Eros and Anteros - Early Modern Culture

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